Gov on the Rocks

As I’ve mentioned on occasion, I do not disrobe in public. I rarely disrobe in private. I put on socks and shoes when I first wake up and I don’t take them off until I get back into bed at night. I often sleep in my jeans. In middle school, while playing basketball, a kid grabbed the area just above my waistline and said, “Look, Pell’s got handles.” That was the last time I played shirts and skins in any sport. If I were to stand on a crowded street corner and pull open my trenchcoat, the most likely thing you’d see is another trenchcoat. (In the Bay Area, we’re taught to dress in layers.) So sharing a wood paneled hot box with a fellow world diplomat is an activity for which I have no naked ambition. But apparently, such interactions are all the rage among DC diplomats who often pull strings (including the ones on their robes) to get invited to let it all hang in the Finnish Embassy Sauna. “Diplomacy takes shape in different ways: formal meetings in the Oval Office and state dinners in the White House’s grand East Room; casual receptions at embassies; and one-on-one meetings over martinis in the lobbies of five-star hotels. And then there is the way the Finnish government prefers to conduct business. They like for their networking and meetings to happen in the sauna and, for the most part, in the nude.” (I think I’ll settle for the natural temperature rise caused by climate change.) NYT (Gift Article): ‘Whatever Happens in the Sauna Stays in the Sauna’: Diplomacy, Conducted in the Nude. “‘When you are half-naked or even sometimes completely naked, it allows for deeper discussion,’ said Mikko Hautala, the ambassador of Finland to the United States. ‘You talk in a way that doesn’t happen when you are sitting around a table with a tie on or at some formal thing.'” Just thinking about this has me sweating; and a sauna is a dry heat.